Japan’s modern education was propelled as a part of new Meiji(明治) government’s educational reform. The new Meiji government entered the way of modernization later than Western powers, and the modernization of education was thought to serve it for catching up the gap. To meet the national goal of ‘wealthy nation and strong military(富國强兵)’ and of ‘rich production and industrial promotion(殖産興業)’, competent people to reach the goal were necessary. To train them, the new Meiji government need to found advanced educational systems and to prepare contents for such education based on pragmatic practical thoughts as soon as possible. The inspection team whom the government dispatched, referring and imitating advanced educational systems of developed countries such as the US, Germany, and France, established Japan’s school system, and Japan’s educational system achieved rapid development through its regulations for education reformed in accordance with trends.
I previously have researched on the educational systems in the early Meiji period from 1868 till 1890. Indeed, this study, as its follow-up, covers the twenty years of Japan’s national education in the late Meiji period from 1890 to 1911, focussing on the changes of educational ideologies. This attempts to examines, from diachronic perspective, Japan’s national education in the late Meiji period with examples showing how the changes of systems and of ideologies influenced the special area of teaching school songs. This study pays attention to the educational ideologies and teaching school songs as their realization within the educational reality in the late Meiji period in which the Dennō(天皇) ideology was completed. For the prior step before researching how education involved in the ideological identity formation of the early 20th century Japan which got into imperialism and militarism, this study thinks about the formation of norm and education in the late Meiji period Japan that was the strong Dennō-centric nation-state